From legal briefs to soap bars

During her 25-year legal career Colleen Laux did not dream of becoming a soap maker.

In fact, if someone had told her 10 years ago that she would be living on Hilton Head Island, spending her days making soap and selling it at a community market she helped create, she knows exactly how she would have responded.

“Oh hell no” Laux said, laughing.

And yet, here she is.

The former Cincinnati attorney is the woman behind Cottonwood Soap Company, a Hilton Head-based business built around colorful, coastal-inspired soaps and bath and body products. What began as a creative diversion has grown into a nearly full-time second career.
It started, however, with one very bad batch of soap.

Laux was a practicing estate planning, probate and fiduciary litigation when her husband began struggling with skin problems. They had tried creams and other products without much success, so Laux went online looking for something she might make herself.
“I fell down the rabbit hole of Pinterest, as I like to say,” she said.

She found handmade soap and decided to give it a try. Her first recipe called for ingredients measured by weight. Laux did not own a kitchen scale, so she converted the measurements into cups and teaspoons.

A cup is a cup, right?

Not when you are making soap. The first batch failed.

“I didn’t understand it was really chemistry,” she said.
She researched a little more, bought a scale and tried again. This time she had soap, and she was hooked.

For Laux, who had always sought creative outlets to balance the analytical nature of legal work, soap making offered something different. She started sharing bars with friends and family, then selling them during the holidays for a little extra “mad money.”

side hustle became Cottonwood Soap Company, which Laux incorporated in 2018. Even then, the business had a Hilton Head connection.

Laux and her husband had vacationed on the island for years and already knew they wanted to retire here. They bought a house on Cottonwood Lane several years before moving, giving the company its name.

They made the move in February 2020.

down everyday life.

Her husband was still working from home. Laux was retired, new to Hilton Head and knew almost no one.

Then she found the Hilton Head Farmers Market.

“My husband will tell you getting into that farmers market saved me,” Laux said. “It got me out of the house. I could talk to people.”

It also changed Cottonwood Soap Company. Laux began attending other markets and treating the company less like a hobby and more like a business.

Some skills from her legal career transferred easily: keeping good books, carrying insurance, meeting tax deadlines and staying disciplined. Almost everything else required starting over.

“100% self-taught,” she said. “Me and the internet and YouTube are what taught me how to make soap.”

She also had to learn photography, social media and marketing.

“You really have to be intentional with the names,” she said.

Few products demonstrate that better than Hilton Head Beach, her bestselling soap.

The bar is a miniature interpretation of a day at the beach. A brown layer with coffee grounds resembles sand. Blue and white form the water and waves, with white on top for clouds. Its fragrance reminds Laux of old Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil.

bring up a memory or create a memory,” she said.

That makes Hilton Head Beach popular with visitors looking for something to take home from vacation. If you are bringing back a souvenir from the beach, Laux tells customers, it might as well smell like the beach.

Her only complaint?

“I very much lament that the website and the internet does not have smell-o-vision,” she said.

Behind the whimsical designs is a process requiring patience.

Laux uses a cold-process method, mixing oils and lye before pouring the soap into molds. After 24 to 48 hours, she removes and cuts it into bars. Then the soap cures for six to eight weeks as water evaporates, creating a harder, longer-lasting bar.

A typical batch produces about 64 bars.

Laux keeps about 10 soaps in her core collection while rotating other fragrances and designs throughout the year. Cottonwood has also expanded to bath and body products, including Happy Heels, a solid lotion for dry, cracked heels, and bath bombs topped with rubber ducks.

Laux’s own favorite soap is Sea Turtle, scented with cucumber, basil and mint, a fragrance she said reminds her of a spa.

The business has grown far beyond what she imagined in Cincinnati. Laux said Shopify notified her when Cottonwood crossed 10,000 orders. She initially thought there had been a mistake.

shocked,” she said.

But some of the most meaningful parts of the business remain close to home.

Laux is one of the original founders of the Hilton Head Community Market and serves as its treasurer. Each month, the market designates a local nonprofit and donates half of that month’s vendor fees to the organization. The nonprofit also receives booth space to meet residents and visitors and share information about its work.

The market has donated more than $44,000 to local nonprofits through its vendor fees, according to information provided by Laux.
The markets also gave Laux something harder to put on a balance sheet.

They gave her a community.

Vendors see one another week after week, share advice and send customers to one another. Laux considers some of them her co-workers.

It is a long way from the attorney she once was, although pieces of that career remain. So does the willingness to keep learning, even when something does not work the first time.

Laux readily admits she worries about failure. Her husband, whom she calls her biggest cheerleader, reminds her to consider what really happens if something fails.

So what?

Asked what she would tell someone considering an unexpected second act after retirement, Laux keeps the advice simple.

“Try it,” she said. “What do you got to lose?”

After all, the worst that can happen might just be a bad batch of soap.

And Laux already knows what to do with one of those.

Cottonwood Soap Company sells weekly at the Hilton Head Farmers Market at Honey Horn and the Hilton Head Community Market at Shelter Cove Community Park, as well as online at cottonwoodsoap.com.